#mary reeser

[archivist-crow]

On this day:

SPONTANEOUS HUMAN COMBUSTION

On July 1, 1951, Mary Reeser left her son's house in St. Petersburg, Florida, returning to her own apartment—where she was mysteriously reduced to a pile of ash and one leg with a black satin slipper on its foot. The sixty-seven-year-old widow, feeling a little low, was headed to bed with two sleeping pills. Pansy Carpenter, her landlady, was the last person to see her alive. Shortly before 9 p.m., she said goodnight to Mary, who was sitting in her comfy chair having a last cigarette before retiring. Heat lightning was in the distant sky.

At 5 a.m. Pansy awoke to a vague smell of smoke, which she attributed to an overheating water pump. When she woke again at 6 a.m., the smell was gone. At 8 a.m. she received a telegram for Mary, which she took to Mary's apartment. Alarmed by its hot doorknob, she shouted for help. Two painters working across the road raced to the rescue. Greeted by a blast of hot air, they entered and searched frantically for Mary. The only fire was a tiny flame from a wooden beam overhead, which arriving firemen soon extinguished with a hand pump.

Charred material and metal springs revealed where Mary's comfy chair had been, along with the unbelievable remains of what had been Mary herself. The rug under the chair was barely scorched. Soot marked the ceiling and upper walls. High plastic outlet covers melted, but low ones were undamaged. An electric clock was stopped at 4:20 a.m., but was unbroken. Pink candles had melted, but their wicks were unburned. A mirror was cracked. Newspapers, linens, and curtains were undamaged. Death-by-fire expert Dr. Wilton Krogmean remarked, "As I review it in memory, the short hairs of my neck bristle with a vague fear. Were I living in the Middle Ages I'd mutter something about 'black magic."

Text from: Almanac of the Infamous, the Incredible, and the Ignored by Juanita Rose Violins, published by Weiser Books, 2009

[wikiweird]

Mary Hardy Reeser (March 8, 1884 – July 2, 1951) of St. Petersburg, Florida, was a woman whose death was purported to be a case of spontaneous human combustion.

At roughly 8 a.m. on July 2, 1951, Reeser's landlady, Pansy Carpenter, arrived at Reeser's apartment on 1200 Cherry St. NE, in St. Petersburg, Florida, with a telegram. Trying the door, she found the metal doorknob to be uncomfortably warm to the touch and called the police. Reeser's remains, which were largely ashes, were found among the remains of a chair in which she had been sitting. Only part of her left foot (which was wearing a slipper) and her backbone remained, along with her skull. Plastic household objects at a distance from the seat of the fire were softened and had lost their shapes. Reeser's skull had survived and was found among the ashes, but shrunken (sometimes with the added descriptive flourish of 'to the size of a teacup'). The extent of this shrinkage was enough to be remarked on by official investigators and was not an illusion caused by the removal of all facial features (ears, nose, lips, etc.). The shrinking of the skull is not a regular feature of alleged cases of spontaneous human combustion (SHC), although the 'shrunken skull' claim has become a regular feature of anecdotal accounts of other SHC cases and numerous apocryphal stories.

On July 7, 1951, St. Petersburg police chief J. R. Reichert sent a box of evidence from the scene to FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. He included glass fragments found in the ashes, six "small objects thought to be teeth," a section of the carpet, and the surviving shoe. Reichert included a note saying: "We request any information or theories that could explain how a human body could be so destroyed and the fire confined to such a small area and so little damage done to the structure of the building and the furniture in the room not even scorched or damaged by smoke." Her daughter-in-law said "The cigarette dropped to her lap. Her fat was the fuel that kept her burning. The floor was cement, and the chair was by itself. There was nothing around her to burn".

The FBI eventually declared that Reeser had been incinerated by the wick effect. As she was a known user of sleeping pills, they hypothesized that she had fallen unconscious while smoking and set fire to her nightclothes. "Once the body starts to burn," the FBI wrote in its report, "there is enough fat and other inflammable substances to permit varying amounts of destruction to take place. Sometimes this destruction by burning will proceed to a degree which results in almost complete combustion of the body."

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[dailyunsolvedmysteries]

Was Mary Reeser a case of human combustion?

On a July morning in 1951 landlord Pansy Carpenter’s doorbell rang and roused her at 8 AM that morning when a delivery man dropped off a telegraph for one of her tenants, 67 year old Mary Reeser. Pansy went to drop the mail off to Mary Reeser at her apartment but found something quite concerning – the door handle to Mary’s apartment was too hot to touch comfortably. Pansy quickly returned to her own apartment and called the police to investigate.

When the police arrived, they found an impossible scene – in the living room of Mary Reeser’s apartment appeared to be Mary herself, only she had been reduced to literal ashes. Her left leg, part of her skull, part of her spine, and the springs of the chair she was apparently sitting in were the only bits that managed to survive whatever terrible fate she had suffered. Strangely, Mary Reeser’s skull was found to be ‘shrunken’ after the fire. This is a far cry from the usual effect fire has – which is that the skull usually swells or even explodes.

Even more astonishingly, there was no fire damage to the rest of the house, despite the fact that a temperature ranging between 2,500 to 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit for three to four hours would’ve had to been available to fully cremate a body. While there was smoke damage present, this strangely only affected the upper parts of the apartment walls and damaged the outlets there. The estimated time of the fire was 4:20 AM since an alarm that was plugged into the damaged upper part of the apartment was stopped at this time.

In addition to no fire damage and little smoke damage, there were no witnesses to this powerful fire or the smoke/smell it would’ve created from burning both a body and a chair. The only potential witness is Pansy Carpenter, who reportedly thought she smelled smoke around 5 AM and thought it was from her overheating water pump, which she simply turned off before returning to bed.

At first, the FBI had no idea what to make of the findings. They were so perplexed that they turned to the public for help: “We request any information or theories that could explain how a human body could be so destroyed and the fire confined to such a small area and so little damage done to the structure of the building and the furniture in the room not even scorched or damaged by smoke."

Eventually, despite these inexplicable anomalies in the fire death of Mary Reeser, the FBI ruled that she was a victim of the wick effect: an initial burn broke the skin and allowed melted fat to leak out to the top, seeping into the clothing and acting as fuel, which allowed her to burn to completion. They state that Mary Reeser fell asleep in her chair with a cigarette, which fell onto her acetate-made clothing and engulfed her completely; the fire also managed to destroy the chair even though it was treated with flame-retardant. The FBI explained that the heat from her body would have risen, which is why there was no damage to the lower parts of the wall but was to the upper parts. As a final anomaly, none of the newspaper next to Mary Reeser’s chair caught fire – it was “unscorched and intact”.

A physical anthropology professor by the name of Wilton Krogman disputed these claims, saying it would be impossible to have the necessary heat to reduce a body to ashes (he agreed with funeral home directors that it would have to be around 2,500 – 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit) without other damage to the home. Additionally, he was the one who had pointed out that of the 30 death-from-fire cases he had studied, the skull had never shrunk – it usually exploded or swelled. The case remains unsolved.

[pastfutureforeverclub]

MARY REESER

MARY REESER

1884-1951

Mary Reeser lived in St. Petersburg, Florida, US and is best known for her death. Her death was believed to have been from spontaneous human combustion.

            At 8am on 2 July 1951, the landlady to Reesers’ property, Pansy Carpenter arrived at the apartment in St. Petersburg with a telegram for her. She knocked on the door but found the metal doorknob was warm. Concerned she called the police.

            When the police entered her home, they discovered the remains of a chair that she had been sitting on, a large amount of ash and her leg and foot (still wearing a shoe) intact which you can view on Google Images. They also found her backbone and her skull. All the items that had been near Reeser at the time of her death, had melted or semi-melted.

            The police sent a box of evidence to the FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. The box contained some teeth, a bit of the carpet and the shoe that survived. Investigators wanted to know how her body could have been destroyed so badly in a fire but the fire only remained a small area of her home and didn’t spread to the rest of the room or building.

            The FBI believed that Reeser had fallen asleep after the use of sleeping pills and fell unconscious whilst she had been smoking. The smoke set fire to her pyjamas and then her body caught on fire. Reeser’s daughter-in-law told a reporter that the cigarette she had been smoking dropped onto her lap; her fat helped the fire to continue burning. The floor was cement and there was nothing near her or the chair which prevented the fire from spreading.

#maryreeser

[verdadeatona]

O Abraço da Morte - Relato Real - Short #religião #curiosidades #mitologias

[emperornorton47]

Obscure Occurrences : Spontaneous Human Combustion

On 3rd July 1951, Mary Reeser was found burnt to ashes in her apartment. Findings suggested that she was a victim of "Spontaneous Human Comb

When I first heard of this case, I spent many nights worrying that strange feelings in my calves were signs that I was going to go up in flame.

[thatsnotcanonpodcasts]

Spontaneous Human Combustion

In this weeks episode Julie decides it's time to terrify KB all over again with Spontaneous Human Combustion & a tale of detached body parts and a delightful shrunken head.

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EPISODE NOTES: 

https://youtu.be/4hVrSEWrKDY

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Reeser

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spontaneous_human_combustion

https://rainbowintl.com/blog/how-hot-do-property-fires-get

https://www.livescience.com/42080-spontaneous-human-combustion.html

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